


The Breath Before the Plunge

by Anonymous



Series: Fighting to Breathe (You Don’t Have to Fight So Hard) [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1306018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When, by ninth grade, Sam hadn't presented as alpha or beta or omega, he'd been secretly relieved. When tenth grade came around, however...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breath Before the Plunge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maadskittlez29](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=maadskittlez29).



> _my monthly gifts are going to be all set in the same ‘verse, and each one will be a new installment of the same story. I intend to take this in a Sabriel direction, but if you end up reblogging or commenting on this post, let me know if you mind this being AU! I’d love to write Sam going to college and meeting Gabriel there. If you’d rather it stick to established canon, that’s also fine; I have an alternative plot beyond the college AU one!_

Sam had never _really_ believed he’d be an omega. No one knew what they’d be, of course, but everyone had a guess, an expectation. Sometimes it was the family with those expectations – Dad hadn’t been all that great with the fact that Dean had presented as a beta, but at least he was an a-beta, a beta that established their position and fought to keep it. He wasn’t a pushover like a b-beta, destined to be the perfect, never-flinching second in command. No, a-betas could easily out-alpha lower-ranked alphas, like b-alphas or o-alphas. Dean never went toe-to-toe with dad, who was only a b-alpha, even though technically he could have. Instead, he remained a good beta, someone who looked out for Sam while Sam went to school, someone who managed Dad and Sam as best he could. While Dad had always wanted Dean to be an alpha, Sam had known his older brother. Dean was always going to be a beta.

 

Now for Sam, it was much different.

 

Sam couldn’t stop arguing. He couldn’t stop asking his father to make their lives better, questioning their Dad’s decisions, hating the fact that Dad, as an alpha, expected to be able to snap his fingers and they could be out of the city within five minutes. He fought tooth and nail with Dad. So yes, he’d never believed he’d be an omega. Not with his personality.

 

Thankfully, his first inkling of what he might be had been in a controlled situation. He presented very late – most children presented their gender orientation by the time they hit eighth grade, but Sam was well into tenth grade before he became aware of what he was. And it wasn’t even a real heat, not really – it was a pseudo-heat, brought on as a sympathy heat from one of his closest friends. There were a few non-gendered students in the upper grades, and generally they hung out with the omegas because alphas took pleasure in teasing the non-gendered and betas, for the most part, wouldn’t risk any social capital by associating with non-gendered students. Omegas, however, were always desirable and their actions always forgivable, so it was at the omegas’ table one late October afternoon that Sam realized Thomas was entering his heat cycle.

 

Heat cycles, of course, granted automatic exemption from school. When omegas got older, they were expected to deal with the early and late part of the heat cycle, but in school omegas could get a pass from the nurse and go home for the day. An omega in heat made alphas ten times more aggressive, shut down the rational parts of their brain, and triggered protective instincts in betas in a ridiculous amount while also obscuring the thought process. Heat cycles also, once they hit the middle part, were painful for omegas without something to fuck them through the cycle, and so omegas generally found an alpha or beta they wanted to have fuck them for the twelve to twenty-four hour period of intense need they went through in the middle, or they satisfied themselves with a wide range of toys and kept themselves busy. Hollywood and popular culture insisted that omegas needed an alpha’s knot to survive the heat, but in reality the omega’s body just needed to be sure it was being bred – which could be done in any number of ways, really.

 

None of that particularly mattered at the moment, beyond the fact that Thomas was entering his heat cycle and was clearly aware of it, as he began to shift uncomfortably.

 

Sam, tall enough to be taken as a senior even though he was only a sophomore, stood up. “You want me to escort you to the nurse’s office?” he asked quietly.

 

Thomas nodded, smiling, and the two of them exited the lunch room to raucous shouts and lewd suggestions from the student body.

 

“Fucking knot-heads,” Thomas muttered, clutching at Sam’s arm and trying to discreetly rub his nose and cheek against Sam’s shoulder.

 

Sam chuckled. “They’re just jealous because you didn’t pick them to see you through your heat.”

 

“Yeah,” Thomas sighed, forehead resting against Sam’s shoulder. “Fuck. I think it’s because I’ve had Jenny over at my house for this project. Our heats are starting to sync. It wasn’t supposed to come until this evening; I wouldn’t have come to school to deal with these morons otherwise.” Thomas smiled up at Sam. “You’ve got the muscle mass to protect me, at least.”

 

Sam flushed – compliments still threw him, he knew – and continued to remain flushed even when he entered the nurse’s office and the nurse’s assistance took one look at Thomas and took him into the back.

 

Coming back, the assistant eyed Sam closely. “You’re non-gendered, yeah?”

 

Sam nodded, not sure why his gut was starting to cramp a bit. He hadn’t eaten anything off, not that he knew of.

 

“Well, it’s rare, but sometimes non-gendered are simply genders that didn’t present at twelve or thirteen like most other people. I think you’re presenting now. Certainly, you’re exhibiting the tells that I would diagnose as pre-heat symptoms.”

 

“Heat?” Sam asked, confused.

 

The assistant came over – a beta, but one of the a-betas, someone who everyone preferred to the actual nurse (an a-alpha who was overbearing and always positive she was right even when she wasn’t, and would berate and humiliate you if you argued with her) – and reached a hand up to the back of Sam’s neck, gently gripping it and pulling Sam’s head down to the junction of his neck.

 

Sam breathed in deep and it seemed like the assistant smelled of safety, of security. Of warmth and happiness and _sex_ and he blinked and stepped away.

 

The assistant let him do so, smiling wryly. “Yeah, I think you’re presenting, Winchester,” he said. “Let’s call your father and get him to take you home.”

 

“But – I mean it’s not – it’s not like what other omegas describe,” Sam said, confused.

 

“Well, if there’s a lot of stress in your life, your heat can be very light. You won’t have that intense period of needing to be bred, but you’ll be irritable and clingy in turns. Your pheromones wouldn’t trigger a lot of aggression or protection in the alphas and betas around you but they would still be able to scent it.” The assistant paused in the middle of looking up Sam’s parental information. “Come to think of it, first heats can be light, and some omegas never have more than a light heat. Just as some omegas can have very long and intense heats, you know. I’d peg you for an a-omega, because you certainly don’t submit like an o-omega or content yourself with second place, like a b-omega, but your gender orientation rarely has anything to do with how intense your heats are. That’s normally biology and environmental factors.” Pulling out Sam’s file, he flipped open the folder and began to dial.

 

“Oh – can you call my brother? He works closer than my dad, and can normally grab fifteen minutes from the garage to pick me up,” Sam said quickly. “Dad’s work isn’t that flexible.”

 

Obligingly, the assistant dialed Sam’s brother while gesturing for Sam to take a seat next to Thomas in the back.

 

As he sat down, Thomas – who had been lying down, eyes closed, breathing deeply in and out – tilted his head over at Sam and grinned. “So, omega after all?”

 

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam said, shaking his head. He knew Dean wouldn’t care, and would bring Sam home and proceed to hover over him, even buy him all the sex toys most omegas used while winking and making Sam blush a brilliant red.

 

Dad, though…

 

Sam wasn’t looking forward to telling Dad.


End file.
